ABSTRACT
Listening work in medicine is driven by the need to undertake clinical encounters and build professional relationships. Although these relationships vary from patient to patient and from situation to situation, cumulative listening builds relationship and listening work in each doctor-patient interaction builds the doctor—patient relationship. The judgements these doctors report in their interactions with their patients, particularly concerning legitimate listening work, the patient’s subjective issues or pathology and factors influencing these judgements, reflect the inherent power differential in the general practitioner (GP)—patient interaction. The GP can choose either to engage in listening work or to resist the patient’s presentation of subjective pathology. Evident in these accounts is resistance to the medical gaze not in the surveyed patient but in the surveying doctor, when asked to gaze at subjective pathology by the patient. Professional role definitions clearly imply that pastoral work is part of the doctor’s role in primary care.
